thecrimeshop

July 23-24, 2015  – 21 month old Lonzie Barton is reported missing by his mother’s boyfriend William Ruben Ebron Jr. Jacksonville, FL

I have to hand it to the Jacksonville police who spent a great deal of time investigating this, trying to get to the bottom of it. To date, they have not found Lonzie and have been unable to charge William Ruben Ebron and Lonna Barton with his murder.  They did a tremendously wonderful job though in trying to put a murder case together.

September 9th, 2015 – 9 week old Chance Walsh, reported missing

To date, once again police can’t prove anything so they have simply charged the parents with what they can.  His grandmother is begging her daughter to tell the truth. The pain the grandmother feels is gut wrenching. It was also reported that Chance’s own mother told a friend that she despised the boy because he was not like his brother. 9 weeks, how much of that baby’s life was spent in sheer hell at the hands of his own mother?

February 10, 2009 – 5 year old Haleigh Cummings reported missing.

It’s hard to ignore the fact that Haleigh’s family is related to Lonzie Barton’s biological father Chris Barton. Not that I feel they helped one another, more than likely Lonna and Ruben got the idea from Haleigh’s disappearance…To date no one has found her and her parents both have subsequently been jailed on other crimes not related to the disappearance of Haleigh.

June 25, 2015 a woman walking her dog finds the body of a little girl in a trash bag on Deer Island – she is named Bella Doe

September 18, 2015 Bella doe is officially identified through the media as Bella Bond, her mother Rachelle Bond is located and charged along with her boyfriend Michael McCarthy. Both blame each other for Bella’s Death. To be honest this case will most likely go down in history as one of the most debated because the public is on either side and/or right in the middle of who really did commit the crime. When all’s said and done though does it really matter who administered the final blow? Both were home and both covered it up. Again, the police here did an outstanding job of not giving up.  

This is just four cases, yet it is something that continues to happen and seems to happen more frequently. A lot of people feel that Casey Anthony got away with it and so will these parents at least to some extent.  Cases like this happen all to often across the US.

What happened to these kids? What is this disposable child mentality? Well, these individuals continued on or tried to continue on with life after the killing and hiding the child. They went on living as if it was nothing. Quite simply, unlike a parent who just walks out of a child’s life these individuals decided they needed a more permanent solution to the one thing standing in the way of them living life the way they felt they deserved. They simply placed no value on those children, no value on that child’s life. Unlike taking the life of an adult they elected to snuff out the life a child who could do nothing to prevent it because it’s smaller than them and can’t fight back. These children meant nothing to them. They used them for a means to something and when that was met they disposed of them.

They are unlike the killer who kills for pleasure, these are trusted in fact the most trusted individuals in that child’s life, they are not like the drug fueled rage killer, the rage they feel is directed squarely at themselves for the failures in life they have met with, yet they take it out on the innocent without a shred of humanity, love or understanding. They used the child to get whatever it was they wanted and after the child no longer serves a purpose to them  they did what one does when something they are using no longer serves it’s purpose they dispose of it. Or they allow for the person they entrust the child with to dispose of it. These individuals simply did not and do not care. They have no feelings of love or attachment to the child and do not care if it lives or dies. 

What makes these individuals different from other types of killers is that they are more unlikely to be charged with the crime of murder. Serial killers are driven for much deeper reasons and the disposal of the serial killer’s victims also carry some significant meaning to the killer. They have a ritual which can easily be traced back to how they kill and how they dispose of or do not dispose of but rather display or leave a victim once they are caught.

When you look at cases such as these where a child is killed by a mother, father, boyfriend or girlfriend, the reason they killed was simple, so in that individual’s mind the initial method of disposal is simple. They dispose of the child so that it cannot be found, unlike a serial killer or glory killer who secretly want the body (s) to be found, so that they can be known. These caregivers don’t want that attention.So they will often times dispose of the body not far from where the crime occurred but go to greater measures to hide the body thus decreasing the chances of it being found or when it is found the evidence is so degraded it can’t be traced back to them. They if history teaches us anything tend to dispose of the bodies in predictable ways and in places that are obvious yet somehow always completely missed during a search for the child. 

It’s more difficult for police to gather evidence in these crimes because they often times are not aware that the child due to his/her age is even missing which helps the perpetrators ability to cover it up.

It’s also difficult for investigators to get a break without the benefit of a body or evidence that a crime even occurred because when these individuals decide they are done with that child’s life unless caught red handed they are not going to talk. Especially if police spend a great deal of time grilling them. Quite simply put, it just makes them feel superior to the police because they know the police have no idea what did in fact happen. Sometimes to get through to these individuals you have to either be them and speak to them as such or be the child and speak to them as the child might if it still had a voice. It’s rare for someone to be able to do that. 

So regardless of the individuals being charged or not this type of killing deserves a special place on my site. Despite the fact that investigators have a pretty good idea of what did happen to each of these children, some have never been recovered. They each deserve a special place on my site where they at the very least will be remembered.

At the end of the day, as frustrated as police, investigators and the rest of us feel with these types of cases unless someone talks, evidence falls from the sky or a body is recovered, these children will forever be lost.

Cristal M Clark